Healthy Bytes

Hormone therapy and breast cancer

read time: 654 words, about 3 minutes

The National Institute of Health started the Women’s Health Initiative back in 1991.
This is a huge 15 year study of over 160,000 postmenopausal women which is focused on the use of postmenopausal hormone therapy. They’re looking at the effect of hormone therapy on breast and colon cancer, heart disease and bone fractures.
They’re using only one drug – Prempro – in the study. Prempro is a hormone replacement drug synthesized from horse urine.

In July of 2002, results from the first part of the study were released. (The complete study goes on to 2010). Prempro was associated with slight increases in breast cancer, heart attack, blood clots and strokes.

When this news was released, Prempro sales dropped 50% in six months… you could say there was a bit of a response.

The rate of breast cancer had been steadily rising since 1945.
With the release of this new data (7.2% drop in breast cancer in 2003), Dr. Peter Ravdin, a medical oncologist and one of the study authors, said:
“Epidemiology can never prove causality”. But he said (a) the hormone hypothesis perfectly explained the data; and (b) they could find no other explanation.

Additionally, epidemiologist at the Northern California Cancer Center Dr. Christina Clarke, has analyzed cancer rates in California. She and her team used data from the National Cancer Institute and Kaiser Permanente. Not only does she show a dramatic decrease in 2003, but the trend carries forward to 2004, tho at a slower pace.

Her data for 2003 shows an 11% drop (compared to a 7.2% nationally). During 2003, Kaiser Permanente decreased their prescriptions for estrogen-progestin hormone therapies such as Prempro by 2/3rds.

These are dramatic numbers, and really, very sensical.
70% of breast cancers are estrogen positive tumors.

Let’s think about alcohol for half a moment. You may benefit from one glass of wine. But what happens if you gulp down a full bottle? It’s not such a good thing.

Back in the mid-60’s, one Doctor Robert Wilson wrote a best-selling book “Feminine Forever”. His theory was a woman should take estrogen to replace the natural decrease in estrogen that accompanies menopause. Estrogen would keep a woman more young and attractive.

There is evidence that taking certain hormones with create certain effects. For instance, taking testosterone generally will increase muscle. And taking estrogen will have some anti-aging effects.

But there are two issues:
1> like alcohol, a small amount may be beneficial; whereas, an “over dose” leads to unwanted effects.
2> For centuries, hormones prepared a woman of a certain age to conceive, carry to term and nurse babies… perpetuate the species. As well - for centuries - when women reached a certain age, hormone changes no longer supported baby production. And women’s role in society changed at that point in their life cycle. Do you think this is all haphazard?
Would you start pumping up the estrogen in a 10 year old girl so she can begin producing a family sooner?

One major role of estrogen is to prepare the body to support pregnancy and nursing. Pregnancy and nursing cause a interruption in high estrogen levels. By keeping the estrogen levels uninterruptedly high for decades after a woman partakes in child production, you’re synthetically altering what has been natural for the species for centuries.

Yes, you can synthetically alter the natural course. But very little (if anything) in nature is discreet. By altering one input to effect a desired output, you coincidentally alter a vast array of other interrelated processes and systems.

Hormone therapy – in some circumstances – is reasonable. In addition to questions of appropriateness, there are also questions of quantity and duration. Postmenopausal women were put on synthetic Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for the rest of their lives. This, irrespective of what is natural/normal for a woman. Nature did not intend women to produce children until they died.

Is anyone surprised that when you go against nature, there are consequences?

This entry was posted on Fri, 15.Dec.2006 at 11:13 am and is filed under Menopause, Pharmaceuticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.